Parenti’s impact can’t be overstated.

Rest in peace, comrade. You were vital in my growth into a Marxist, and it cannot be overstated how many people you’ve made into communists. May we carry on your legacy!

“Yellow Parenti” Speech and Blackshirts and Reds | Audiobook

Rest in peace, comrade.

For those who haven’t read or seen Parenti speak, I highly recommend both the “Yellow Parenti” Speech and Blackshirts and Reds | Audiobook both litanies against anti-communist mythos, an examination of the real successes and struggles in the USSR, and an analysis of fascism.

Parenti has turned countless westerners into Marxists, and was vital in my own journey to the left. May we carry on his legacy.

Thanks, comrade! 🫡

Trying to do my part to help the good fight.

Independent scholars across China, the USSR, Cambodia, Ethiopia, and North Korea all documented millions upon millions upon millions of deaths from engineered famines, purges, forced labor camps, and political executions.

Who are these “independent scholars?” No modern historian using data from the soviet archives, or other such reputable source, believes that there were “engineered famines” in socialist countries. Famine existed, and was in all cases a common phenomenon pre-socialism, ended by the communists. The highest plausible death total from purges in the soviet union is around 700,000, though actual analysis shows that this number is simply those condemned to death, when it was common for the soviets to walk back death condemnations, meaning total executions is far below. The majority of deaths in socialist prisons came from starvation during World War II, when the Nazis took Ukraine, the USSR’s bread basket.

Adding on to this, Cambodia’s “agrarian communism” isn’t recognized by the overwhelming majority of Marxists as actually socialism. Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge denounced Marxism, and they worked with the US Empire, being stopped by the Vietnamese communists.

To the contrary, millions of deaths from engineered famines have been proven by capitalists, such as the Bengal Famine by Churchill. Churchill had this to say:

I hate Indians. They are a beastly people with a beastly religion. The famine was their own fault for breeding like rabbits.

There is also the capitalist Nazi Germany, which inflicted the holocaust, murdering tens of millions in around a decade.

Whether the exact total is 60 million, 80 million, or more, the sheer magnitude is confirmed far beyond the Black Book.

The sheer magnitude is confirmed to have been far less both in ratio and in total than capitalism.

Facts: Communist governments were responsible for mass mortality on a historic scale.

To the contrary, communist governments have been responsible for mass uplifting in life expectancy and poverty eradication on a historic scale. From the USSR:

To the PRC:

Communists have been responsible for doubling life expectancy, tripling literacy rates, eradicating poverty, rapidly improving production and distribution, democratizing society, and far more.

I believe presently most instances use Matrix for this.

The US Empire has been collapsing for a long time. Trump didn’t turn ICE into gestapo, it already was. Christian nationalism rose as a consequence of imperialist decay, and a necessity to turn austerity inwards as the spoils of imperialism are drying up. What we can do is organize to establish socialism, by joining orgs such as the Party for Socialism and Liberation.

It cannot be stressed enough that the rise of the far-right is a consequence of the material reality of dying imperialism. The US Empire, post-World War II, has been the world hegemon and plunderer of the global south, the largest exporter of death and genocide. As the global south is decoupling from the US Empire and developing, this is causing an internal shift towards oppressing the US populace more to protect the superprofits from imperialism lowering.

The 1990s, in recent history. The dissolution of the USSR was catastrophic, both for those living in the socialist side of the world and those without.

It’s dissolution was a dramatic setback in the global transition to communism. 7 million people are estimated to have died indirectly as a result of that, and we spent the next decades in bleakest reaction to it.

The Kim family has a large role in politics, but this isn’t something hereditaty. From Professor Roland Boer’s Socialism in Power: On the History and Theory of Socialist Governance:

The DPRK’s electoral democracy relates primarily to the people’s assemblies, along with local state organs, assemblies, and committees. Every eligible citizen may stand for election, so much so that independent candidates are regularly elected to the people’s assemblies and may even be elected to be the speaker or chair. The history of the DPRK has many such examples. I think here of Ryu Mi Yong (1921–2016), who moved from south to north in 1986 so as to take up her role as chair of the Chondoist Chongu Party (The Party of the Young Friends of the Heavenly Way, formed in 1946). She was elected to the Supreme People’s Assembly and became a member of the Standing Committee (then called the Presidium). Other examples include Gang Ryang Uk, a Presbyterian minister who was a leader of the Korean Christian Federation (a Protestant organisation) and served as vice president of the DPRK from 1972 until his death in 1982, as well as Kim Chang Jun, who was an ordained Methodist minister and became vice-chair of the Supreme People’s Assembly (Ryu 2006, 673). Both Gang and Kim were buried at the Patriots’ Cemetery.

How do elections to all of the various bodies of governance work? Elections are universal and use secret ballots, and are—notably—direct. To my knowledge, the DPRK is the only socialist country that has implemented direct elections at all levels. Neither the Soviet Union (in its time) nor China have embraced a complete system of direct elections, preferring—and here I speak of China—to have direct elections at the lower levels of the people’s congresses, and indirect elections to the higher levels. As for candidates, it may initially seem as though the DPRK follows the Soviet Union’s approach in having a single candidate for each elected position. This is indeed the case for the final process of voting, but there is also a distinct difference: candidates are selected through a robust process in the Democratic Front for the Reunification of the Fatherland. As mentioned earlier, the struggle against Japanese imperialism and liberation of the whole peninsula drew together many organisations, and it is these that came to form the later Democratic Front. The Front was formed on 25 July, 1949 (Kim Il Sung 1949), and today includes the three political parties, and a range of mass organisations from the unions, youth, women, children, agricultural workers, journalism, literature and arts, and Koreans in Japan (Chongryon). Notably, it also includes representation from the Korean Christian Federation (Protestant), Korean Catholic Federation, and the Korean Buddhist Federation. All of these mass organisations make up the Democratic Front, and it is this organisation that proposes candidates. In many respects, this is where the multi-candidate dimension of elections comes to the fore. Here candidates are nominated for consideration from all of the mass organisations represented. Their suitability and merit for the potential nomination is debated and discussed at many mass meetings, and only then is the final candidate nominated for elections to the SPA. Now we can see why candidates from the Chondoist movement, as well as from the Christian churches, have been and can be elected to the SPA and indeed the local assemblies.

To sum up the electoral process, we may see it in terms of a dialectical both-and: multi-candidate elections take place in the Democratic Front, which engages in extensive consideration of suitable candidates; single candidate elections take place for the people’s assemblies. It goes without saying that in a non-antagonistic system of class and group interaction, the criterion for election is merit and political suitability

As for the bodies of governance, there is a similar continuity and discontinuity compared with other socialist countries. Unlike the Soviet Union, there is a unicameral Supreme People’s Assembly, which is the highest authority in terms of laws, regulations, the constitution, and all leadership roles. The SPA is also responsible for the national economic plan, the country’s budget, and foreign policy directions (Han 2016, 47–48). At the same time, the Democratic Front for the Reunification of the Fatherland has an analogous function to a second organ of governance. This is a uniquely Korean approach to the question of a second organ of governance. While not an organ of governance as such, it plays a direct role in electoral democracy (see above), as well as the all-important manifestation of consultative democracy (see below). A further reason for this unique role of the Democratic Front may be adduced: while the Soviet Union and China see the second body or organ as representative of all minority nationalities and relevant groups, the absence of minority nationalities in a much smaller Korea means that such a form of representation is not needed.

I highly recommend the book, it helps shed light on some often misunderstood mechanisms in socialist democracy, including the directly addressed fact that the DPRK’s voting process includes single candidate approval voting. Without the context of the candidate selection process, this is spun as entirely anti-democratic.

The Black Book of Communism was debunked by its own writers. Conquest was described as obsessed with reaching 100 million, and to do so he included Nazis killed during World War II, non-births as deaths, made up numbers, dramatically exaggerated existing events, and more. Citing the 100 million number in the modern day when even those that helped invent that claim have since denounced it isn’t particularly historically truthful.

Even including famine, and the mass starvations in soviet prisons during World War II (when the Nazis took Ukraine, the USSR’s breadbasket), life expectancy doubled in the USSR compared to pre-socialist levels:

Literacy rates went from 20-30% to 99.9%, healthcare and education were made free and dramatically expanded, and Russia itself went from semi-feudal to space in half a century. Socialism was an incredible success, even if there were flaws and struggles along the way.

The soviets were absolutely better than the Nazis, the Nazis committed mass genocide and tried to wipe out jewish and slavic peoples. This is teetering into Double Genocide Theory, a form of holocaust trivialization. The soviet union was a massively progressive movement over its history while the Nazis were brutal butchers.

Yea that one bugged me a lot. There were literal nazis let out of prison, and lynchings of Jewish people and communists. Trying to downplay the anti-semitism was sad to see.

The USSR wasn’t an empire, no, and the 1930s famine was a tragedy, but wasn’t intentional nor inflicted.

The USSR was a socialist federation. It wasn’t dominated by finance capital and late stage capitalism, and as such did not share the same drive capitalist countries have to export capital and plunder internationally. The USSR had no colonies nor neocolonies.

As for the 1930s famine, it was caused by a combination of factors, including adverse weather conditions, and bourgeois farmers called “kulaks” burning their crops and killing their livestock as protest against collectivization. There was no intention to cause a famine, nor to steer an existing famine, and as such it was a tragedy but not a genocide.

But let’s assume that all of his claims are true, since both the soviets and the west spied on eachother a lot. So even if MI6 trained some hungarian it had a mere effect compared to the huge grass-roots uprising in various cities by the commoners.

Your source confirms that MI6 aided the fascists. The west took advantage of far-right elements and aided them, they didn’t invent new far-right elements. CIA propaganda outlets like Radio Free Europe stoked grassroots resentment against the communists, combined with MI6 training and arming former members of the Arrow Cross Party. This strategy of taking existing levers and massively tilting the scales and facilitating them, forcing more radical action, is the way color revolutions typically play out.

The “fascist elements” author was expelled for a time by the CIA in suspicion of being biased towards the communists.

Reality aligns with the communists, any honest journalist would be found guilty of such bias. Anna Louise Strong was also punished for honestly reporting on the socialist sphere as a Statesian. The CIA and US State Department find it unacceptable when journalists report positively or sympathetically towards communists and socialists, and pull various levers to silence them.

Another CIA document which doesn’t believe there was a rise of fascism.

Former far-right elements made up a portion of the communist government and millitary, as this was only a decade out from World War II. The fact that they were retained doesn’t mean they weren’t fascists, or that they had pulled a full 180. Just a decade prior, Horther’s regime had been gleefully assisting the Nazis, such a complete turnaround is impossible in such a short span of time.

“Anti-semitism was marginal. From sources I checked, anti-semitic acts and various messages did happen and come up (mainly in the countryside), they were more sideline occurences that did not come to shape the overall tone of events.”

Downplaying the infestation of anti-semitic pograms described as especially bad in Hungary. The “freedom fighters” restarted the pograms, and would mark the homes of Jews with black crosses, for nightly executions by the fascists. The fact of the matter is that the counter-revolutionary moment was starting and facilitating pograms, while the communists had stopped them.

Just by seeing how many antisemite people every country has even now, it is reasonable to assume that these incidents weren’t way above than the average. However Stalin and Brezhnev used antisemitism extensively under their rule

Anti-semitism was punishable by death penalty in the USSR, this is largely Red Scare fearmongering. In fact, the soviets were accused of being jewish supremicists, hence the hysteria around “Judeo-Bolshevism.” The USSR was the opposite of anti-semitic:

Source: Works, Vol. 13, 1930 - January 1934 Publisher: Foreign Languages Publishing House, Moscow, 1954

"National and racial chauvinism is a vestige of the misanthropic customs characteristic of the period of cannibalism. Anti-semitism, as an extreme form of racial chauvinism, is the most dangerous vestige of cannibalism.

Anti-semitism is of advantage to the exploiters as a lightning conductor that deflects the blows aimed by the working people at capitalism. Anti-semitism is dangerous for the working people as being a false path that leads them off the right road and lands them in the jungle.

Hence Communists, as consistent internationalists, cannot but be irreconcilable, sworn enemies of anti-semitism. In the U.S.S.R. anti-semitism is punishable with the utmost severity of the law as a phenomenon deeply hostile to the Soviet system. Under U.S.S.R. law active anti-semites are liable to the death penalty."

• J. Stalin January 12, 1931

On the other hand, killing communists by the revolutionaries was definitely a more common thing. Imagine as a young student seeing the Communist Party win with a huge blue ballot election fraud, implementing brutal planned economy tactics which lead to country-wide famine (my grandma as a child seen newspaper as a rich person’s item, life was so brutal), your people being deported to Gulag just because they dared to even question the dictatorship in any way, instilling fear by the ÁVH, political members being executed on false charges, etc. and not having the urges to kill hardliner stalinists with a lead pipe. Ofc killing people are awful, but brutal times can bring out the extremes of some people.

Linking a right-wing anti-communist think tank for the majority of your sources, and cherry picking tragic mistakes in order to justify killing communists is awful. Planned economy aided food production, and fascists were jailed, that doesn’t justify murdering leftists.

The soviet prison system was actually very progressive for the time. Mary Stevenson Callcott documented it quite well in Russian Justice. Similarly, the soviet stystem of democracy was dramatically expanded on what came before it, documented by Statesian journalist Pat Sloan in Soviet Democracy. Coming out of World War II, when Hungary had sided with the Nazis and gleefully participated in the holocaust, political struggle was rife. As such, trying to erase the fascist elements from a post-World War II Hungary is a process that takes more than a mere decade (as we see with the reintroduction of lynchings and pograms by the countet-revolutionaries).

That CIA document happened way after 1956, and the CIA was caught in a surprise after the revolution have began. They were only doing small intelligence gathering before that.

The CIA did not spark the revolt, but they assisted with it, as did MI6. As shown earlier, CIA propaganda outlets like Radio Free Europe stoked grassroots resentment against the communists, combined with MI6 training and arming former members of the Arrow Cross Party. This dramatically emboldened the fascists and radicalized them, steering and fostering an environment for counter-revolution.

Also if the CIA would have funded this uprising then the revolter party wouldn’t have been a socialist lead party by Imre Nagy.

The west has a proven track record of supporting liberalization and undermining socialism, which is what Imre Nagy was doing, along with allowing the lynching of Jews and communists. There were progressive elements in Nagy’s faction, but these progressive elements were outweighed by the overall fascist nature of the movement, and as such the worker councils established during 1956 need to be understood within that context. Similar to Kronstadt, fascists took advantage of anti-communist “left” dissent to steer a grassroots movement into a darker, terroristic direction.

Overall, your goal here seems to be to downplay antisemitic lynchings, paint lynching communists as a good thing, and try to pretend that the soviets were brutal monsters, all while linking right-wing anti-communist propaganda outlets. This whitewashes literal Nazis. According to polling, 72% of Hungarians are worse off than under socialism, being proud of resisting such a liberatory system is deeply confused.

Yep.

Yep, I wrote about that more in-depth here. What I’m talking about is the modern usage of the term, especially here on Lemmy.

There’s really no such thing as “politically neutral.” The US Empire and “Israel” have already been bombing Palestinians as they like, China’s presence likely would not stop them. Palestinian statehood, and the permanent disollution of Israel, are both necessities for Palestinian liberation.

By that point, though, Lenin had lost a great majority of his childhood privledges. His father died at 15, and he was expelled from university for his radicalism and participation in demonstrations. By the time Lenin would have had this picture taken, there’s no confusion about his material wealth.

I’m not sure bourgeois was the right label either, though his family was certainly well-off.

Bourgeois?